Gas crunch hits high school athletic departments

AthleticBusiness.com says high school athletic administrators across the country and scrambling to deal with high gas prices. The lead example is from Asheville:

Long before the average price of diesel fuel in Asheville, N.C., reached $4.75 per gallon (up $1.86 from a year ago), A.C. Reynolds High School athletic director Jim Sziksai warned his coaches of a pending gas hike. “I kept reminding them for the past year that tough times are coming,” he says, adding that as early as 2006 he began asking coaches to consider scheduling more non-conference games with nearby opponents. “But I didn’t predict prices were going to rise as dramatically as they have.”

As the spring sports season at high schools around the country wrapped up, the national average price of diesel fuel (on which many team buses run) hovered around $4.50 per gallon, according to the Oil Price Information Service. Regular unleaded was at $3.80 per gallon and eventually topped $4 — spelling trouble for A.C. Reynolds’ teams, many of which regularly spend four hours traveling to and from conference games. Last year, combined travel expenses for the Rockets’ varsity and non-varsity athletic teams reached $50,000. This year, costs were estimated at $65,000, and the expectation is that transportation costs could reach $90,000 during the 2008-09 academic year.

In April, Sziksai mandated that his coaches limit all non-conference games beginning this fall to within a 50-mile radius. If they want to travel farther, teams will be responsible for financing the additional mileage. Sziksai also suspended the athletic department’s four-year cycle of uniform purchasing, asking teams due to receive new uniforms next season to make do with the old ones for another year. The school’s annual student-athlete fee also increased from $25 to $36 to help offset the increase in transportation costs — although that won’t be nearly enough.

“Our biggest concern used to be time spent on the road and out of class, because we would have to leave an hour and a half before school let out,” Sziksai says. “That is still an issue, but our athletes have adjusted to that by making up schoolwork. Now, the main concern is financial. We’ve never had anything like this, when we’ve had to worry about something so much. I’ve lost my hair trying to get us through this crisis.”